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 Spurred
on by the presence of a dance band that rehearsed down the street
from my home in Morningside, a suburb of Sioux City, I began playing
on a silver Wurlitzer alto sax that had seen better days. My first
memory of playing in a dance band is that I repeatedly lost my place
trying to read stock arrangements in that band. Soon I had a new
instrument and a student dance band was formed at East High School.
We performed at school dances-and I learned how to keep my place. By
the time I graduated from East High and moved to Iowa City and enrolled
in the university, I was prepared to play in a somewhat more demanding
venue. Luckily, Iowa City had a big dance band led by Larry Barrett.
We played for sorority and fraternity functions in the Memorial
Union and for various shows and even, I recall, for a musical comedy
composed and orchestrated by Larry Barrett. Barrett was a talented
arranger and the band played many of his originals plus rather cool
charts derived from Count Basie and Duke Ellington.I dropped out of the university after a couple of years and for awhile performed in a Sioux City nightclub, the Oasis. The band was led by Darrell Sheffield, a local music store owner, and we performed from 9:00 p. m. until 2:00 a. m., seven days a week. The Oasis club was permeated with smoke and the smell of stale beer. My tuxedo faithfully reprised the bouquet.  The Oasis location job eventually disappeared and I found myself back in Iowa City and re-enrolled in the university. Larry Barrett had also returned to town after a stint with Bud Freeman's army band. The Barrett band was enlarged to six saxes and eight brass and four rhythm plus a vocal group and I began to specialize in baritone saxophone. Since I was trying to support myself by working a board job in Currier Hall dormitory and paying the rent with band jobs, I picked up on whatever jobbing I could. I recall, among other locales, the Moose, the Elks, the American War Dads and the American Legion Hall. In my spare time, I was pursuing an academic major in psychology and philosophy. By the fifties, I had finally completed university studies, and desperately needed a job in order to pay my bill to the dissertation typist and the gas station. By that time, big bands had begun to fade away and my playing consisted of casual jobbing in smaller groups. I became a faculty member at the (now) University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls and my musical interests were subordinated to the demands of the professoriate. In fact, I was reluctant to reveal the fact that I played in dance bands, for, in those days, jazz musicians were thought to be dissolute wretches. Still I played occasionally around Cedar Falls and Waterloo for ice shows, circuses and joints and even returned to Iowa City now and then for an occasional gig.  Eventually,
by the sixties and seventies, rock and roll and other forms of pop
music had virtually taken over from jazz bands. I rarely performed,
getting seriously rusty and out of practice while putting in academic
time. At the University of Northern Iowa, jazz took on new life
with a stage band program and now boasts a full-fledged program
of jazz studies and an excellent set of jazz bands and smaller ensembles.
Robert Washut, Director of Jazz Studies, put Northern Iowa on the
jazz map with his own piano performance, his compositions and arrangements,
Jazz Band I, and as an adjudicator.Now retired from the university, I perform only occasionally. I'm the substitute baritone sax for the Cedar Falls Municipal Band. It's a good group and a fun assignment. Though I play the phonograph these days more than the saxophone, I still maintain an interest in the music. The premiere alto saxophonist of my youth, Johnny Hodges of the marvelous Duke Ellington orchestra, is now preserved on remastered CD's. It's a way of returning, if only in spirit, to the glory days of the forties and fifties. |
